"Re: Your Brains" is a song on Jonathan Coulton's fifth album, Thing a Week Two. It is one of Jonathan's most recognizable and best known songs, a concert staple and an identifier of his place in the geek rock genre.

History

"Re: Your Brains" was released as the twenty sixth Thing a Week on March 24th, 2006. It quickly became one of Jonathan's most recognizable songs, becoming the first song to receive a WoW video by Spiff.

During Desert Bus for Hope 2009, Jonathan Coulton was interviewed over the phone. Later that night, someone paid for Graham to sing Re: Your Brains in a Billy Mays voice. This was later put to the karaoke version of the song, and was dubbed 'Re: Billy May's Brains.' The MP3 can be found here.

Live performance

"Re: Your Brains" is one of Jonathan's most regularly played songs; it is believed that Jonathan has performed it in nearly every concert since its release. In live performances, the song is almost always played as the closing song of the main portion of the show. It is always introduced as needing audience participation, at which point Jonathan explains to the audience that he needs them to perform the zombie portion of the chorus. First-time JoCo fans and unfamiliar audiences will usually sing the test chorus with proper tone, rhythm, and diction, after which Jonathan will correct them, instructing them to instead sound properly like singing undead: tone-deaf, arrhythmic, and unintelligible.

Trivia

There was a large controversy between JoCo fans over whether a colon appears in the title of the song or not. This was caused by the absence of a colon both in the JoCo store and on the Thing a Week 2 CD case. However, upon consulting with JoCo it has been established that the title is supposed to contain a colon.

Spiff's WoW video for "Re: Your Brains" has been viewed over 3,000,000 times and is often credited by fans as their introduction to Jonathan Coulton.

In Spiff's video, the woman trapped in the house does the Macarena during the guitar solo.

In the webcomic ErfWorld, Book 1 Page 14 features the main character, Parson, listening to "Re: Your Brains" in his car on his way to work.

The song is one of several available on a working jukebox in "The Parish", "Swamp Fever" and "The Passing" campaigns of Left 4 Dead 2. If the survivors stay by the jukebox, an infected horde will appear when the first chorus starts. Also available, although rare, is Still Alive.

The song is used as the opening theme for a short audio drama by Mur Lafferty, titled The Takover, described as The Office meets Shaun of the Dead. Jonathan makes a cameo appearance in the last episode.

Availability

Downloads

"Re: Your Brains" is currently only available for purchase in the Jonathan Coulton MP3 Store as an individual track or as part of Thing a Week II. Of course this song is also included as part of the "Everything" playlist.

CD

Games

"RE: Your Brains" is one of the jukebox tracks in Left 4 Dead 2, and a horde automatically attacks at the beginning of the first chorus.

"RE: Your Brains" is also now available as downloadable content for Rock Band and Rock Band 2 as a part of "The PAX 2009 Collection" track pack (for 240 MS Points) and as an individual song (for 80 MS points).